Against what?!

There is not one nation that is capable of launching a concerted attack against the U.S. And besides, who would bother with the cost? A quarter of the most sensitive targets, military, industrial, and political, are within 50 miles of a coastline. Put the nukes on speed boats, drop them off tankers in international waters, use a GPS and a remote control to send them in the correct direction of the beach. BOOM! Am I the only one that can figure this out? Of course not! But terrorists don't even have that kind of money. So what are we protecting against?

Nothing.

Bush is keeping his promises to his industry buddies to get military funding for contracts flowing again. It's all about the corporations that Bush is in bed with. If you're telling yourself anything different, you need a good therapist, because you are deluded. You're probably one of those idiots that believes in the "trickle-down" theory.

When your kids have to grow up in a world where China, India, Pakistan, and Russia are all in an arms race, with Asia-Pacific tensions mounting daily, and you're scared out of your wits that your kids may not get a chance to grow up at all because China has the might and population to overrun the U.S. or at least bomb us back to the stone age, keep this in mind: I didn't vote for the bastard. The first time he mentioned the words "strengthen our military," I knew this would happen. Well, ok, I did expect him to honor our treaties and not make us look like back-stabbing fools, but then I actually expected him to honor the office he assumed. What was I thinking?!

Now, assuming that we get a chance to continue aging gracefully, let's talk about Social Security. The Monkey Faced Frat Boy (MFFB) violated every assurance he gave our aging Baby Boomers and borrowed from Social Security. OOPS! I guess those massive tax cuts that gave massive returns to the richest 1% of Americans, and the piddling $300 tax rebate given to the other 99% of Americans must have just trashed the beautiful, first time in history surplus that the Democrats put together over the 8 years prior to MFFB getting into office.

He visits California just long enough to get some mileage out of Gray Davis' power management problems, a situation he has an in depth understanding of as evidenced by this notable quote from a NY Times interview, "The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants."

Huh?

And then there's this little gem that demonstrates his grasp of current events in Washington, "One of the interesting initiatives we've taken in Washington, D.C., is we've got these vampire-busting devices. A vampire is a -- a cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone."

Whew! Good thing we got that cleared up!

This man is such a mental giant that he adds words to the English language with gusto, "I've coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically."

Good thing, too. I've been searching for a word that means, "like a Mexican," as in, "He ran Hispanically," or "George Bush would like to think Hispanically, but he was drunk through most of his college years and didn't study enough to broaden his horizons sufficiently," but my own poor grasp of the language just fails me. I'm so glad we have MFFB to provide the verbage for those situations.

I recently had the good fortune to jump into a cab in San Franciso driven by a young Arab man. We started talking and came very quickly to the topic of his homeland, Palestine. I asked him how the current tense situation was affecting him. WOW! I got a quick education on middle-east relationships.

The Jews were given a land-grant early in the 1900s when Britain ruled Palestine as one of its territories. That land grant was not unpopulated desert. This land belonged to people who had their homes and businesses there. Their families' histories were based in those areas. Imagine the U.S. government giving your home town to the Bobites. Bobites are a large group practicing an ancient religion centered around Bob Barker (I had to make something up or risk ticking off some religious faction somewhere). These people are scattered around the globe and historically they've never had a land of their own. They have always been nomads. Well, now they have a home: your home. All your rights to this property have been revoked and you must leave. You don't want to, of course, and you decide it's time to dust off the hunting rifle and show them who this government is of, for, and by.

And now you understand how the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) can come into being.

The Bobites bring their wealth with them. Your home town is not a major industrial or technical center. It's just a small town, not a lot of money. The Bobites, meeting with resistance, at first enlist the aid of the U.S. Army to quell rebels, but eventually they put the wealth pouring into the area into military hardware and training, eventually forming the best trained and outfitted army next to the U.S. Army itself. And they start taking matters into their own hands, shelling your downtown area, arresting "terrorists", invoking curfews, all in the interest of protecting their "settlements." Settlements that rest right where your house is, which by the way is now inhabited by someone else, and where your business was, which by the way is no longer "Joe's Burgers," and is now "Sam's Falafel House." Not that Sam gave you any money for your existing business. No, you were evicted by the Bobite government and Sam moved in.

Are you happy with this? No.

Do you fight back? Hell yeah.

I'm not advocating terrorism, and the PLO resorted to some of the worst terrorist acts in history, but you see my point.

It doesn't help that Israel recently installed as their President a man that was convicted in 1983 of complicity in the murder of hundreds of Palestinian refugees during the Lebanese war. Thanks to one conversation with one taxi driver, I no longer see the news about the escalating war in the Middle East as another blurb about a confusing conflict that I don't have understand. I see an oppressor, Israel, slapping the undermuscled Palestinians around and beating the snot out of them when they react. Ariel Sharon is a Slobodan Milosevich who's better at inciting and then hiding behind nationalist psychosis.

Not that Bush gives a rat's butt one way or the other. Now if invading Israel meant channeling more oil to his buddies.... Well, we'd see tactical nukes in full swing....